Transcription
First, I have to just say thank you. So you've had a big impact on me. You don't know this; we've never met. But many years ago, when I was deepening my movement practice, somehow I stumbled upon YouTube videos of a man running through the woods barefoot, doing all kinds of, um, playful activity that looked completely at one with nature, completely in tune with it, resonating with the Earth itself. And I was inspired. Since then, well, that I mean that inspired me to go out in the woods in my backyard, to lose the shoes, lose the socks, connect a little deeper, and it's been a real beautiful journey what has unfolded for me in my own movement practice. So I want to thank—say thank you—for that inspiration. I think there's a lot of people out there that you've never met that you have offered that for, so I really appreciate it and will forever be grateful. It's altered my course of my movement practice.
I do appreciate your kind words. Thank you for sharing your feedback. So let's start with movement. You were talking about that one video that you watched many years ago.
Indeed, I was. 2008, 2009 maybe, and I was going through nature doing all kind of movements. But those movements that you would do in nature, which are to run, to crawl, to jump and climb, and balance, and to overcome many forms of obstacles in nature, and I called that MoveNat, which is the name of the method that I've created, and I've also coined the term natural movement for that idea that we human beings, all of us, regardless of what we look like and where we come from, are meant to move a way that is universal. We have like a foundation that we all share of movement that is natural movement. So natural movement, in that sense, is not going to be yoga or Tai Chi, which are which stem from a specific culture, like from India or China or wherever. That is natural movement is what you see all young children do, regardless of, again, the background, their ethnicity, in Africa, in Europe, in in the in in the Americas, in Asia. Anywhere you go, you'll see young children go from the same process of developing the same movement abilities, which are they're going to be crawling, rolling, um, they're gonna start to stand and then walk, ultimately build balance and run and jump and land and climb and lift things and toss things. And so why is it that it looks like it's a program, a universal program, a physical program that is instinctive? It's truly universal, and it's truly instinctive. Every single parent all over the world is going to try to tell their kids, "Please don't do that. Don't vault over the couch. Don't crawl under the table. Don't jump off the chair," and so on. And why? Because all this—these kids, boys and girls—are expressing the same human movement patterns, and those human patterns, with the totality of it, I've called natural movement. Now, all of us have done it, all of us can do it, but to what extent do we still do it, and to work with what level of efficiency or effectiveness can we still do it as adults? That is a different question. Now, when we when we can dismiss the necessity of those movements, we are basically—most of us—culturally, socially, or raised and trained to dismiss the necessity of those movements. But why, as an adult, why would you crawl on all four? Why would you hang and climb anything? Why would you jump and land, um, except if it's part maybe of a very specific, very regimented fitness program? But otherwise, it's gonna—you you think that you will look weird if you do these things that you're not supposed to do. Those things, they're—it's for kids, or it's for animals, or something. It's not you. It's not—it's not supposed to be part of your expression as a person. Well, that's—that's too bad, because that's actually natural movement. It's a birthright; we all should do it. It keeps us really healthy; it makes us feel good. It's a little—if you were to put a—any world anymore—in an enclosure and then tell them, "You know what, you can only walk in circles or swim in circles," how depressing. Yeah, well, that's what's happening to most adults today, because we stand, we walk a few steps to the next seat, and then we sit, and then we sit for hours, and then we stand up, go to the next seat, repeat, and we do that every day. So where's the movement expression? Where's—where's the natural movement that we once knew and experienced and had when we were kids?
So MoveNat is a method that teaches you, first, that authorizes you, that inspires you, that enables you to express all those movement abilities again as a form of fitness. When you do this, you move that way naturally; you'll become fit naturally as well. And not only we do that, we teach people techniques so that they can do all these movements in a way that is safe and effective, of course, but also efficient. It's a little like a martial arts that would extend to many other—a practical skills—than just being able to defend yourself. Um, you don't go in a bar to learn or in the street to learn, you know, how to fight. You don't start fights out there with random people. No, you go to a special place with a teacher, Sensei, a master, whatever you want to call that person, and they're not going to send you back to the gym so that you're fit enough so that you can learn techniques straight away. They will teach you, "Okay, these are the basic techniques that you need to learn." Why? Well, because efficiency is—is paramount; it's the most important. So the same applies to the way you run, the way you jump and land, the way you hang and climb, the way you balance, the way you move on all fours, the way you breathe—all of that. This is what the MoveNat method teaches people, and ultimately you are going to acquire what we call real-world physical capability. You become capable to operate your body in the real world if needed. And by the way, typically, you know, when you need to move furniture or when there is a real issue, like a threat maybe, and you need to respond physically, typically you're not going to do yoga, you're not going to do Tai Chi, you're not going to do ping pong, you're not going to do crunches or sit-ups or—no. Where you need to do—run for your life, lift and carry somebody to safety, climb and jump over the obstacle so that he can get out of a tight spot or reach somebody who needs your help, etc. That you are in the military, that you are a law enforcement, that you are especially a firefighter—look at the movements they need, look at the physical capabilities they need; it's absolutely natural movement. They need to run and jump and land and climb and balance and lift and carry heavy things and so forth. It's funny—what a better way to—to do fitness, to train your body than to learn to be physically helpful to yourself and others by learning those techniques and by becoming specifically fit in the process. That's the MoveNat mindset.
It's funny you say that. There's—um, locally the fire department has—um, a test in my county, and I'm sure many have them, where it's a fairly physically demanding test, and I went through it because some of the local gym owners in my area got certified to help people that were trying to pass the test, that were trying to become firefighters. So we were able to like put together programs for them in the gym to better prepare for it. But the test is—I mean, there's a section where you're crawling through a tunnel; it's basically trying to represent—uh, carrying your equipment up a high-rise and saving someone's life. And there's a part where you're crawling through a tunnel that's about—uh, three by three feet wide on all fours with a 70-pound weight on your back in the dark and feeling your way through. And yeah, you're dragging a 180-pound body; you're putting up ladders; you're opening up doors with—uh, like a sledgehammer—like all this—um, things that we wouldn't really associate with like exercises we do in a gym. But I had—I went into it with no specific training for the test, but—uh, at this point, years of flopping around on the floor, you know, lots of crawling, lots of loaded crawls, lots of weird carries, lots of outdoor work barefoot, and—um—it's—I mean, I don't think it's—Quincy—it served me really well. First try, pass the test with no—and—um—and it was—I was kind of impressed by how they put it together. I mean, it was hard, and it seemed to be really well thought out, but it was anything but—orderly and structured. It was—you know—what's real when something actually happens. And yeah, these—these like innate patterns that are kind of hardwired into our DNA that we express in the first year of our life when we're learning to respond to our environment, the gravity, the ground, the three planes that we live in, and how to—you know, with our anatomical design—like respond to those environmental parameters to learn how to move our body and navigate through space. All those things are like built into everything that was meaningful, and—um—it's really nice to kind of draw those connections.
I'm also always amazed when you look—when you relearn some of the more fundamental movement patterns that we develop and, you know, very early childhood, a few months old, as an adult, as we reconnect with them, and you realize how hard they could be—like how challenging. Yes, like these little transitions from lifting your head up to—you know—progressing to higher positions where you have to manage force going through your body—um—and in a way that is very challenging, and kids do it without anybody telling them how to do it. So they do this very challenging thing where—adult—you see it—I see adults every day in the gym shaking through these—they train all day. Yeah, they train all day, but none of the adults in the room are saying, "Now draw your shoulders down," or—like—there's no direction, and they're still doing something that's hard because it's a program; it's—it's a universal program; it's in us. And not that they are not learning on the way, obviously—a six-year-old is more able of movement than the four-year-old, and then the two-year-old, and then when will be eight years old, 10 years old, 12 years old, imagining that not only they would be let free to—to keep exercising their body and exploring their abilities that way, but even support it and or encouraged to do it, then imagine what they become—12, 14, 16—forces of nature, very athletic, naturally capable of jumping, landing, climbing again, or doing all these real-world movements. And why would you not call that fitness? That is the real meaning of fitness, but it's beyond how much can you bench or what's your glutes and your abs look like. That is not the concern, even though if your overall lifestyle is healthy and you do train that way, you bet that you're going to have a very good athletic-looking body. Yeah, the form definitely will follow the function. Yes, but most important—function. So if you have a body that you make to look a certain way that is deemed to be looking fit by modern standards, and you put them to the test—that kind of test you talked about, the kind of tests that we at MoveNat put people through—very simple movement sometimes, just—just—um—just get down to the ground and back up without using your hands or your knees. Can you do that? And most people realize that they just can't. It's not even anything complicated; it does not require a lot of strength—um—and yet there are so many limitations. I've seen those limitations including in—um—elite—um, like MMA fighters or—or special operators. I've seen them sometimes struggle with some of the most—most natural and simplest natural movements. Right? Why? Because it is really not part of people's lives anymore. Okay, those—those movements are totally taken out of our day-to-day behavior. So after a few years of that kind of neglect, it—we lose it, right? We have—chairs and couches to sit on, so at what point do we need to get up and down to the ground or to squat for an extended amount of time or to hang and climb anything or to jump off anything or over or around anything? We don't—we don't. Yeah, we don't—we don't need it at home; we don't need it at school; we don't need it in the street; we don't need it—uh, at work; we don't need it—um—at the gym, right? So they're in some professions, there are some—you know—some professions, some people have to climb a certain way or some kind of up—you know—whatever—poles or trees, and—um—in some other jobs they need to hike or they need to lift things. Typically it's very specialized—few people—like—um, firefighters have jobs that require from them that they have a baseline of—of capability in—in that full scope of—of abilities that are—again—that are again physical capabilities for the real world. So it's a—it's a mindset, and you need to also think of not only maintaining those abilities for yourself the longest you can, but also to do so because that's an example you set for the future generations, starting with your own children.
Yeah, it's interesting. It's like—it's—in one hand it's important for us to work out on ourselves to set that example, and almost like the flip side of the coin I feel is that kids in some ways are our best teachers. Like if there's a fountain of youth, it's—it's—"Look what little kids do. Do what they do." So yeah, they get on the ground; they move; they run; they climb; they play; they fall; they also are like very willing to laugh and dance and cry, and they generally don't care what other people think about them. And there's a lot—there's so many lessons to learn from that in—in all those aspects, and you know the movement's just one part. And then, you know, if we're open-minded, we see that seeing them will nourish us, and then as we practice, we teach them that it doesn't go away; it's a mindset; it's a lifestyle; it's a way of living, and they could see that, "Oh, you know, it's a sustainable thing; you don't have to—hang it up when you get a job and there's a chair for you to sit in and kind of give up on being young."
You mentioned you can hold your breath, and boy, that's an understatement. Everyone—the national record holder—six—am I saying this right?—six minutes and 46 seconds you held your breath. Okay, so—um—let's—let's—let's set this straight.
Um, yes. Uh, actually, I can hold my breath for eight minutes. Um, there are two—so there are two world federations for what's called freediving, and holding your breath the longest possible in a static fashion without moving is one of the disciplines. There are also holding your breath while you are swimming in the water, with no fins, with fins, or the monofin, and you can do the same also going down that depth. So those are incredibly hard—feats, and they sound—it—so one of them is just holding your breath, doing nothing else, but which is pretty easy, you know, just hold your breath—you wait—yeah—so wait for eight minutes. Yeah, easy. All right, so I hold one of the two national records, which is—uh, 6:46, and in January I'll attempt to break it—um—but my personal record is at eight minutes, two seconds, and that was last January. So I believe that I'm beyond that at this point because I've done seven minutes twice. But here, the altitude where I live, which is—um, 7,600 feet or something like that. Okay, so—uh—2,300-foot elevation—so that would equal technically on the paper to something beyond eight minutes, more like between 8:30 and 9 minutes.
So you really notice a difference as you change elevation?
Oh, yeah, obviously. Yes, the—uh, you know, the—the atmospheric pressure is less, so that means that the concentration of oxygen is less—um—also, so it's not that there is less oxygen in percentage, but there's less oxygen in concentration per volume of air. It's—it's a little—I definitely looking to learn a bit more about this. So I've been practicing breathwork for a while—um—a bunch of different styles, many through like yoga practices, different pranayama, uh, play with Wim Hof a little bit, Butako breathing, and—um—I love—I love it all. I find, you know, there's—there's like a style for every mood I'm in to deploy, you know, and—and enjoy. And recently—um—I guess you came back in my field of awareness; it was on my feed. I don't know if it was on—one of the social media platforms, and I was like, "Oh, man, I haven't seen anything from—growing up—in a while," and it was about breathing, and you had like a little mini-course to do it, and it was interesting because most of the—I've done a lot of breath holds—nothing in the ballpark. I think I've flirted with three minutes before, but nothing—nothing crazy like the numbers you're putting out there. But—uh—I—I do find that I could pretty much in any given moment get to one or two minutes and get some really neat benefits from it, I find. But what I've noticed is I've really—I don't know if it's because what's been taught to me or I've really just gravitated towards these breath holds where their exhale holds essentially. So regardless of the style that's leading up to the hold, I generally feel really comfortable holding my breath—uh, either at the end of the exhale or, you know, starting with a really long exhale. And your first message that I received was really a different style where the breath hold is after the inhale, which, you know—um—innately seems right, like that's—if—so if you said, "Go hold your breath," to someone and didn't tell him anything, they'd probably inhale and then hold their breath. But I've learned all these practices that are like the other way around, and I've got a lot of benefits and joy out of them. I was hoping maybe you could talk a little bit about maybe that difference or why that—why that—that's what's on that initial hello of your mini-course, like what is it about that style breath that you find offer something that the other styles seem to—to miss out?
Well, so first off, um, I too hold my breath after exhales—either passive exhales or natural exhale or forced exhales, and there are benefits to that, and it is also part of what I call breath-hold work, which is my method. So breathal work is both breathwork and breath-hold work. So it's not only the practice of breath, which is diverse ways to change your ventilation. Okay, so let's call breathing, because there's a lot to understand.
Um, in order to answer a question, I need to reframe things a bit.
Sure.
When we breathe, that's ventilation. We inhale, we exhale; that's ventilation. It's the biomechanical part of our breathing, and there's the breathing within, which is called cellular respiration. It's what's happening at a biochemical level within our cells—that gas exchange—that primarily the goal of that is to—keeps us oxygenated, because without oxygen we know that our cells are going to die, and when cells die, it's not good because we die too—like the whole thing is dying. So when you are going to change the way you breathe—the ventilation—you're going to play with it, you're going to manipulate it, where you're going to modify—it's not the way you would typically breathe reflexively. When you do something else—you watch a show, you work, you do anything else—you don't think about breathing; it's taking care of; it's taken care of by your autonomic nervous system. And then all of a sudden you're like, "Oh, wait, wait, I'm breathing, and I could change that. Wow, it's powerful—like I can consciously decide that I'm going to modify my breathing instead of let it be." And then you have all these different exercises, these different methods, and if you think about it, there are almost countless ways you could modify your breathing just because you can. Now, what few people understand is what is exactly going to happen at a cellular level of breathing—the cellular respiration—whenever you change the way you normally breathe, because there will always be an impact internally on your cellular respiration and on your nervous system. What is that impact? Well, it depends on the way you manipulate your breathing, and this is not always taught by the people who tell you how to do the exercises and just tell you, "Do the exercise that way." They may not tell you, "Okay, this is what's going to happen to your cellular respiration if you do that, and this is what going to happen to your nervous system if you do that." The problem with that is that—do you actually need that exercise in the moment? Who needs what and for what benefit? Because you could be in a place where you're not physiologically ready or neurologically ready for what that specific breathing drill is going to do to you, but you've not been told that because you're part of a group or because it's just, "Okay, just do that and do the exercise, and that's it—don't ask questions." So I guess the first point I want to say is be careful the way you modify your breathing because it does have an impact, and that impact is not always beneficial. It's not always like, "Oh, I see rainbows, and I feel relaxed," and no, it's not always there; it's not always that, because it depends on, again, on what is your current state physiologically and neurologically, and what do you need. Okay? And then there is the—uh—practice of holding your breath. Now you talk about—um—ventilation—well, there's no more ventilation at all. You're not even really manipulating your ventilation, or you are ultimately manipulating it because you're just pausing it. You don't breathe at all; you don't inhale; you don't exhale no more. Now, what is this going to happen—uh—to trigger, and what is going to happen within other physiological level and a neurological level, and why would you do that, and how do you do that? Well, again, so there are different ways to do that as well. Why is it that I do it primarily after a large—large exhale? Well, because there are more benefits overall; there are more benefits to doing it that way than doing it after an inhale.
Can you speak to some of those benefits?
Absolutely. One of them being what is called CO2 tolerance, which is the ability to tolerate elevated levels of CO2 in your system, starting with your bloodstream and your lungs. So when you pause all ventilation, your cells keep being alive, and yourself keep using oxygen, and you keep—as a result—generate what's called CO2—carbon dioxide. That carbon dioxide has nowhere to go; normally it would be exhaled, but now it's retained, so it accumulates in your bloodstream; it changes the biochemistry of your bloodstream; increase—increase of CO2 means a decrease in pH; your blood becomes more acidic; your respiratory centers, which are in your—what's called the—the brainstem in the middle oblongata, you have chemoreceptors; they are receptors—chemical receptors—central chemoreceptors—the sense that there is that elevation in the acidity of the blood, and that's typically a problem—means—well, you need to ventilate more; you need to breathe more to exhale that, but because you don't, it keeps going up, and so it means that it's going to alert you; it's going to agitate you; it's going to stress you big time. So you see, when you exhale, you will want to breathe much earlier, but when you take a large breath, you have a lot of air in your tank; you have a lot of oxygen; therefore, you do not have any concerns you have about the oxygenation of your body or including the oxygenation of your brain; that is not the problem you're dealing with when you want to breathe; that's not because you start lacking oxygen; it's because the buildup of CO2 gets so high that you start to stress because of that. So that the ability to handle that stress is very important, and obviously when you start your breath-hold after exhaling, you will not have a lot of time to generate that CO2 buildup and therefore to have to learn to calm your mind through that. So that's number one; it's your ability to—what I call—to down-regulate at a neurological level. And number two, when you take a large breath, you are—and then you're going to hold it, so you're holding a level of pressure inside your lungs called intrathoracic pressure or intrapulmonary pressure; that's unusual, and that's higher than what you're used to; that too is a stress. So now you're dealing with two internal stressors, and your ability to deal with an internal stressor is basically your own ability to deal with stress. So you're learning to deal with stress—how to respond to stress—but at the physical—physiological level, the fact that your lungs are full and held for minutes at a time or a certain amount of time—in their stretched—well, this is going to improve their elasticity; this is going to improve their diffusion power—means how fast—how much oxygen and how fast transitions from the inside of your lungs into your bloodstream—is going to increase what's called alveolar area, which is—uh—the inner surface of your lungs that's exposed to air—the air that you breathe—and there's a correlation between the size of your lungs and that alveolar area and longevity. So it's good for longevity; it's good for oxygenation. Basically, when you train this way—by the way, you were asking about the difference between holding your breath on full lungs and holding your breath after an exhale—well, when you hold your breath after an exhale, you keep your lungs small, so you don't grow a bear—have lungs; you don't—you want to grow a pair of lungs—actually, we have three lobes, so I mean it's a pair of lungs; we have two lungs; we have three lobes—um—they have a certain size, and it is known by the whole medical field that elderly people who have a greater what's called vital capacity—basically, they have bigger lungs—enjoy their quality of life, greater health, rare longevity. Why? Because if your lungs are bigger, and typically when they're bigger means they're bigger because they exercise; they are being exercised more through exercise or like running or anything like that, but also breath-holding. When you breathe normally—your regular breathing—it's easier—more economical for you to breathe, so you—you make less effort; you provide less effort just doing regular breathing; it's more economical, so it's like your flexing a muscle; you're making it stronger, and then—yeah—it makes everything else easier for it—like the everyday—uh—demands of it become easier.
Yes, exactly.
When I'm—so I've been practicing a little bit—um—and it's interesting because when I do big inhales, they're usually not hold—so I don't linger long enough to notice some of the nuance. And now that I've been playing around with it, I'm noticing like—like even—um—like I have more awareness of where the restrictions in my ribs are because I'm—I'm creating that—I guess—intrapulmonary pressure; there's—there's a pressure on my ribs, and as you sit there for—um—you know, a minute or so, you have time to like notice things like how they feel, and I'm—or I'm discovering areas of like stuckness where there's not as much movement; it's not—it doesn't feel even, whereas if I wasn't holding, I don't think I would ever notice that. So it's giving me—um—like little lessons of like, "Hey, what do you—what are you neglecting over here? Are you lacking some mobility, some range of motion in your—in your ribs?" And I assume that that would improve just through practice from—from creating that—
Yes, from the inside. Yes, that absolutely, and also it will improve your—um—your—your tolerance to the—it's a form of mild—it's a mild form of stress. The great thing about this kind of practice—it's obviously one of those mindful practices where stresses are internal; they're not external; it's not cold—cold is external; heat is external—um—it's just you, and you—by the way—you can stop the stress anytime you want; you can breathe anytime you want; it's easy, right? Okay, so you may have a conscious decision; it's a mindful decision—"I'm going to hold my breath for as long as I can," for instance, or for a whole minute—to each conscious decision, right? It's deliberate, and then you're doing it, and then you feel stressed, then you're like, "Oh, wait, now I don't want to do that anymore." So there are levels here of—you know—psychological considerations—do you have commitment? Do you have self-discipline? Do you have courage? Do you have self-compassion because you're suffering—uh—but you have indeed resiliency and an ability to commit. Then, because of biochemical changes, and it's not just biochemical, okay, it's also at a hormonal level—um—it's a whole neural—neurophysiological processes that are taking place; it's basically your autonomic nervous system, which is another part of your consciousness, another part of your brain—it's not another person; it's the same person that says, "Knock knock"—lessen up—"you know—um—big guy, I know you think you are on top of the world and you're the king or a queen; you said you were going to hold your breath no matter what, but if you keep doing that, it's dangerous"—whatever—it's perceived as a threat, and it's gonna do all it can to defeat you and to resume ventilation. So basically, you have a conflict of—of power within you—the one mindful mind that says, "I choose," so "I decide," so—and then the autonomic nervous system that says, "Excuse me, but no, you're not going to be in charge no more; I'm in charge; I'm in charge of survival, so I'm going to agitate you; you're gonna feel horrible; you're gonna feel emotionally unstable; negative; your thoughts are going to start being negative too; you're gonna start fighting yourself with your own decision; you'll lose all peace, all clarity, all centeredness, and you'll breathe again." So how do you meditate through this? And that's the question—how do you know thyself better? Because everybody knows that it's not going to be pleasant, and if you keep doing it, it's gonna be an ordeal, and you will even—obviously—question the necessity to do this—like, "Why even do this in the reverse place? That's ridiculous; there's got to be a way to meditate that actually makes me peaceful and centered."
When you think about it, conventional meditation implies that you avoid all and any kind of stress—to—you will use slow breathing to help quiet your mind. Now, how can you call a breathal work and meditation—holding your breath and meditate at the same time—when one—it instantly creates—triggers an internal stress—a physiological stress—that obviously becomes a neurological stress, a psychological stress, and emotional stress. So how do you respond to that stress that you—and nobody else—creates? You can't say, "Hey, you're doing this to me." No, you're doing this to yourself. Number one, you made the decision to not deal with it, and two—well, "Can I use breathing and like the regulation of my breathing to de-agitate, to call my mind, to center my mind, to reclaim stillness?" Well, no, you can't, because you're all in your breath. All right, so how do I center my mind, tranquilize my mind, and establish peace and stillness when I cannot use breath and when I'm dealing with the stress which is caused by not breathing? And that is precisely why it's a very powerful form of meditation.
I remember hearing a study—um—talking about stress and like the hormetic—the positive response to stress and how there's a—there's a line that you cross—like if it's a voluntary stress, it's a very positive hormetix—uh—with stress response you get compared to involuntary. I think—now—granted, I think it was like a rat study where they forced them to exercise or they give them the choice to exercise; they each do the—they do the same exercise, so they have the same—um—like nominal amount of stress, but it's perceived differently because one's jumping on the machine and one's being put there essentially, you know, like—you—when you know it's coming and you're—and you're choosing it, there's a much better—like—more positive physiological response you get from that stress as opposed to just—uh, you know—getting the negative part without the positive rebound or something. Do you think there's something to be said for that—like you're creating this mild stress, and then you're managing it, and you're kind of flexing the muscle; you're strengthening your ability to just—um—manage a stress, and it's—and you get this positive physiological benefit because you put yourself in there; it wasn't like you were thrown into a fiery pit; you kind of prepared and cleared your mind and—and walked into—and walked over the coals or whatever—like you—there's a psychological component to it that really alters the type of benefit, the type of response that comes from the practice. Do you think there's something to be said about that because you're—you're—that sounds stressful—I mean, when you talk about a breath-hold, right—like you're fighting innate forces that want—that—where your autonomic nervous system wants you to do something very different than your—than your—what you're doing.
Yeah, and the point is to align—is to align all your different cells—basically, it's almost like we're—there—there are several of us inside; there are different executive functions of the brain. So you have that conscious mind that makes the decision of—let's say—holding your breath for a certain amount of time—for the longest time possible—and then you have the autonomic nervous system, and then you have a limbic brain; you have different parts of the brain; they have different responses; they try to make sense of the experience; they try to make sense of how to handle what is necessarily perceived as a threat because you—you know—consciously, but also these other parts of your brain—of parts of your nervous system—also know that the end result of—to keep doing that—is
Your lack of trust comes from the same place, um, your feeling of being threatened comes from from the exact same place, from the very core of who you are. And who you are is not the house you own or rent, or the car, or the job, or the name, or the clothes, or friends, and the whole whatever happened to you and what your body looks like now, at your age, your gender, your whatever—that is not who you are. Who You Are is who you choose to express and experience in this very moment; that is who you are in every moment. So what is being expressed? What do you choose to express? Because whatever you're going to express under that form of stress is going to be who you choose to be. And if you have a clarity in the consistency to express patience and trust, self-compassion, um, in love while you are under a stress that you yourself created, it's very likely that you will be able to—that ability and those qualities will carry over, carry over to other um, circumstances of life when you do have an interaction with the with of the people, with the world.
Because when you are holding your breath, you're in your bubble; there's no interaction with the world. You are the whole world, and the only interaction you have is with yourself—what is happening there. But not when you have a luxury of breathing, maybe floating and you know, relaxing, some gentle music, a bit of incense, a little candle—all it's good. No, no, no, no, that's easy to—that's relatively easy, right? Not that easy, by the way, even in that kind of context; some people are still bringing on all their stress, all the worries: what's going to happen, and that person's bothering me, and this and that. So imagine no incense, no music, no Mala, no Mantra, not even slow breathing—just hold your breath, stress yourself out, and now you choose who you want to Res—who you want to be through the kind of response that you create—you and nothing else. You're the world in this moment; anything that happens, anything that is being experienced is on you. That's beautifully said. And I guess through that practice, as you develop your essentially your relationship with yourself, it will translate to how you relate to all the things, whether it be loved ones, environment, whatever. I mean, you are altering the way that you show up in the world. That won't make you perfect; uh, that won't make you um, insensitive, or or or all positive, and but you will definitely um, if you can't achieve um, this kind of emotional um, stability and clarity, yeah, yeah, mental clarity in in that context, it's very likely that it will support also being a, you know, having the ability to respond or to interact that way with others—not a guarantee, obviously. You're cultivating the quality, so the quality will get stronger, like as you become more self-compassionate through that practice. As you practice, you become a more self-compassionate person. Yes, and it starts obviously within.
Yeah, uh, you have a beautiful way of explaining these things, and it's very inspiring. I feel like it's inspiring me, like I'm looking forward to going to another level and deepening my own practice, and I would like to take one of your courses. So from what I understand, you offer online courses; are they—do they have like a live component to it? Or—I have one e-course; it's called a Breathful Work Meditation, okay, of course, um, and so it's four modules, and you have um, like more than 100 videos; there's a a lot of insights; I connect a lot of dots. Okay, and where do we—is that at breathholdwork.com? Yes, it is. And then there is a live—I do the same cover, same content within um, eight sessions in one week for uh, sorry, four weeks, one month; it's a live version of it. The next um, starts uh, early January, soon, and uh, you know, um, on top of, you know, people report that their day-to-day breathing rate, you know, the speed at which they breathe is really, really reduced. So people learn to breathe much slower than before, take less breaths, which is which quite the heart squats the minds it, and also they report a lot of uh, just being much more calmer, much calmer in their life. And of course, there's also the aspect which is um, their ability to hold their breath a much, much longer time. So we're talking about people who can barely hold their breath for a minute and then end up being able to hold their breath for four minutes; uh, we've had people who were able to hold their breath for five and for some six minutes. So everyone at least doubles, if not triples, quadruples—we have had cases of people multiplying their breath-holding ability by five.
That's wild! And that's without hyperventilation, okay? So we're not going like—we're not doing—this is just—and most importantly, because that's within four weeks, you are going to have some physiological adaptations within four weeks, but they cannot explain that somebody would triples, quadruples their breath-holding time. The reason and the explanation is because they learn tolerance; they learn to tolerate. And how do they learn to tolerate? They learn to tolerate by understanding what is exactly going on in their body, in their mind, in their heart, and many, many tools, many insights, many tools that I connect to just be completely present and at the same time detach from it all—it's that's the paradox: it's a presence and attachment at the same time. Nice. Tolerance is an important word, I feel like right now um, if you well, if you peer through your your screen, your device and get a glimpse of what goes on in the world, there's room for a lot more tolerance in general—the story of the world—I've been always will be. It's an overlooked quality, and breath work is just one more tool, I guess, to practice that. My favorite thing about the tool or breath is, you know, it's it's just with you all the time; it's portable, it's free, and everybody has access to it; there's no socioeconomic barrier; there's, you know, just a very low price of entry, and um, it it still goes overlooked, underrated. I mean, better than any tool you could find in the gym or whatever—it's like it's the best, and we all have it. So uh, I'm honored to be a conduit for your message, to hopefully inspire others to um, to look inward, to dive a little deeper themselves and see what is what's there to offer themselves through that practice. I really appreciate you taking the time; I know we're a little bit past when you had to get out of here, so I want to get you out of here, but we will link to breathholdwork.com. I want to look in; hopefully, I will see you in that course in January, Erwan. Um, that sounds fantastic. And for the listeners out there, I really appreciate you tuning in; I hope you got some value out of this conversation, and um, if you have any questions, send them away, and if I can't answer it, we'll see if we can get or want to and follow up. Thanks, everybody; have a terrific day. Thank you.